


Unusual October

by MagicCarpet



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien has no sense of fashion, Fluff, Outlandish Outfits, Rice pudding, Rice pudding themed nightmares, Strange Sleeping, Unusual October
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-23 09:29:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16156304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicCarpet/pseuds/MagicCarpet
Summary: A series of oneshots created for Tumblr user terrible-miraculous-ladybug-aus's Unusual October prompts.  Expect unedited, fluffy drivel.  If I do it right, it might even be funny.





	1. Outlandish Outfits

**Author's Note:**

> One more time, I'd like to stress that this is unedited drivel. And I'd like to stress that I'm only stressing that because, like most writer-type people, I'm dead sensitive. If nothing else, this ought to get me in the right headspace for NaNoWriMo.  
> I would seriously appreciate any formatting tips, because I'm new to posting here.  
> Here's the October 1st prompt, Outlandish Outfits. This one's based on my much-loved headcanon that Adrien Agreste, having likely had his clothes picked out for him for his entire life, has no personal fashion sense.

When Marinette saw Adrien on Tuesday morning, she went bright red from her ears to her toes and ducked under her desk.  Alya found her there five minutes later, quavering through what looked to be a low grade panic attack. She immediately squatted down next to her and tried to model slow, deep breaths.

“You okay, girl?”  Alya’s voice was bright, but her eyes were narrowed.

“Adrien,” Marinette managed to croak out.  Alya frowned. Her friend’s cheeks were so hot that she thought they might actually be  _ smoking _ , and her hands couldn’t seem to stop shaking.

Alya put a hand on her shoulder and leaned in for a cuddle.  “Did Chloe do something?”

Marinette could only raise a shaking hand to point.

Thanks to the tunnel vision she tended to get when Marinette was upset or in trouble, Alya hadn’t even noticed Adrien on her way into the classroom.  She noticed now—and choked. She wasn’t alone, either. Nathaniel, red as Marinette, was bent determinedly over his sketchbook, furiously looking anywhere but the front row.  Rose and Juleka were debating, in low voices, whether one of them should go over and  _ talk  _ to him.

And Adrien?

“Hey, Alya,” he said with one of those smiles that usually turned Marinette into a quavering mass of jelly. 

Alya couldn’t breathe.  She locked eyes with Nino.  “Bathroom!” the two said at the same time.  Alya leapt to her feet, slammed her head on the underside of the desk hard enough that tears clouded her vision, and just kept moving.  Outside, she leaned against the wall and sank down to a seated position, pulling her knees to her chest. And then Nino was there and his arms were around her and she relaxed into his chest.  They laughed, helplessly, until they were weak with it and neither of them could breathe.

“What the actual fuck?” Alya wheezed the moment she could draw breath again.

Nino was wheezing too.  His hat dropped to the floor as he shook.  “He was telling me last night about how Nathalie’s sister is sick and his father’s away on business, so it’s just him and his bodyguard for a few days.  He said something about being excited that he could pick out his own clothes for once, but I never thought…” And he was off again, positively sobbing with convulsive laughter.  “Alya, we’re going to have to go back in there and  _ face  _ him.”

“And you know what you’re going to say, right?”  Someone was standing over them. A blond, unpleasant someone, perpetual smirk conspicuous in its absence. 

“Good morning, Chloe,” ground out Alya, vocal cords completely shot.

Chloe’s mouth was set in a hard line.  “I just got done telling the others. Adrikins is happy, and that doesn’t happen as often as it should.  If any of you ruin this for him, you’ll answer to me.”

Nino was instantly serious.  “Absolutely, dude. Adrien’s my bro.  I’ll do anything to make him feel better about himself.”

Alya could only nod.  “I’m in.”

Back in the classroom, she slid into her seat next to Marinette, who was sitting normally but still absolutely scarlet.  “Adrien?” Marinette’s voice was somewhere between a whisper and a hiss.

He turned, chartreuse fedora slipping over his forehead, and beamed at them again.  Chloe glared daggers in Marinette’s direction, waiting.

She gulped.  “I like your…”

Hoping to help her, Alya looked Adrien up and down, from the cheetah print jacket with its faux fur trim to the magenta rain boots.  There was nothing to compliment. Her eyeballs wanted to sink into their sockets so they didn’t have to look anymore.

“...belt?”

Alya wanted to cheer.  The belt was the least offensive part of the outfit.  Normal, if a bit wide and made of a fabric that looked like it belonged on an old woman’s housecoat.  A good choice.

Nino cleared his throat.  And cleared it again. “That’s a very nice…”  An audible gulp. Finally, he waved vaguely at the hunter green bolo tie.  “Whatever that is,” he managed to say, “I like it.”

Adrien’s smile was like watching a sunrise, so Alya couldn’t do anything but smile, placidly, and save her screaming for the inside.  She felt her classmates settling into the miserable realization that none of them had the heart to crush his spirits. They’d just have to keep this up.

“Thanks,” Adrien said.  “I picked it out myself.”


	2. Strange Sleeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Adrien has a surprisingly wholesome encounter with his father and a rice pudding themed nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day two! I have complicated feelings about Mr. Agreste. On one hand, he's a horrible father. Full stop. On the other, he's had some softer interactions with his son that show that while he's far from being a good parent, he does care for Adrien. I have a complicated relationship with my own father, which is a big reason why I relate to Adrien so hard. It's hard, loving someone who doesn't really know how to healthily love you back.

When Adrien was little and he couldn’t sleep, his mother always made him hot chocolate.  A decade later, he wasn’t sure his father even kept any in the house. But with thunder rattling at his bedroom windows, there was no way he was getting to sleep without some kind of help.  Leaving Plagg snoring in his wastebasket, he crept down the stairs, wincing every time his bare feet slapped against the tile a little too loudly. Why did feet have to sound so _weird_?

With relatively few heartstopping slip ups, he made it to the kitchen door and turned the doorknob in the careful way he had learned as a seven year old, pulling the door open without a sound.  And there, dressed incongruously in slippers and a bathrobe, was his father. Adrien barely stifled his gasp of horror.

Gabriel Agreste was bent over the stove, stirring something.  Even in his state of blind panic, Adrien registered that it smelled delicious.  And then it clicked.

“Mother’s rice pudding,” he breathed.  It had been almost a year. In that magical way smells do, the scent transported Adrien back to a dozen faraway Christmases and quiet moments, back to the warmth of his mother’s cheek against his.  It hurt in the way he’d been trying to force it not to hurt.

Gabriel loomed over him.  “Adrien? Why aren’t you in bed?”

Adrien almost couldn’t speak.  “I was having trouble sleeping, Father.  And I thought—Mother used to—”

“ _Adrien_ ,” Gabriel said again, his eyes softening.  He hesitated, and for a split second seemed almost afraid and very small.  “I’m not much of a chef, but I was thinking of her too. Would you like to have some…”  Again, that strained, frightened look.

A strange, warm feeling swelled within Adrien, one he was wholly unaccustomed to.  “I’d love to,” he said.

Later that night, full of pudding and contentment, Adrien dreamed he stood on the bank of a milk and sugar river, watching as his mother, clinging to a grain of rice as big as a tree branch for dear life, was swept away downstream.  He grabbed a nearby cinnamon stick and tried to hold it out for her to grab, but the cinnamon turned to butterflies that filled the air, blocking her from his view.

He couldn’t see her.  He couldn’t see her. She was gone.

Adrien woke up drenched in his own sweat.


	3. Too Much Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hawkmoth teams up with our heroes against a zombie horde.

In the midst of a zombie apocalypse, Hawkmoth has the jitters.

“See you later, logic!”  Chat Noir curled up into a small ball of leather and frustration on the warehouse floor.  “I can’t deal with this. I can’t.”

Marinette—Ladybug—felt her lower lip, which she’d been stress chewing for the past three days, begin to bleed again.  “Thanks for saving us back there,” she said to the third person in the room, adding, as an afterthought, “I suppose.”

Hawkmoth bowed in a way that was clearly meant to be gracious but actually made Ladybug want to deck him.  “My pleasure.”

Chat Noir let out a screamlike laugh.  “This isn’t happening. This is not happening.  I’m going to wake up back home with—someone standing over me, telling me I’ve overslept.”

_ Something _ —a body, perhaps—jostled the wall outside with a heavy thunk.  Ladybug’s hand leapt to her yoyo, and even Hawkmoth visibly flinched.  He was so human, there in the flesh. Marinette— _ Ladybug, Ladybug _ —didn’t like it one bit.  She didn’t want to relate to him in the slightest.

When Chat Noir spoke again, it was almost a wail.  “This isn’t real. It isn’t.”

Holding the yoyo, clenching it tight in her fist, was enough to steady her.  Ladybug bent down next to her partner and rested a hand on his arm.

“It may not make any sense, but it’s real enough right now, Kitty,” she said, as gently as she could.  “And the people out there are real, too. Some of them are trapped. We have to regroup and help them.”

Chat Noir curled up tighter, teeth gritted, then let out a long sigh.  “Right,” he said, sitting up and scrubbing at his face with the back of one hand.  “Why are you here, again?” he snapped suddenly at Hawkmoth.

The villain drew himself up to his full, impressive height.  “Because my butterfly swarm is able to hold these… zombies at bay, if only for a moment.  This… it is not mine. It is not  _ controlled _ .  And it is not safe.”

“When have any of your akumas ever been safe?” Chat Noir demanded.

“They are under my control!”  Hawkmoth slammed his cane into the ground with a deafening crack.  Outside, the guttural mumble of a thousand entranced voices grew louder.  

“Focus, both of you!”  Ladybug tried for a menacing glare.  Difficult to pull off at five foot nothing.

“The point, then,” said Hawkmoth.  “I have a son out there. Doubtlessly the two of you have people to worry about as well.  If we are to get back to them, we will need to work together.”

At this, Chat Noir finally nodded.  “Turn back and regroup then?”

When Ladybug bit her lip, Hawkmoth scoffed.  “Take turns and have one of you stay and watch me, then.  I won’t look.”

When all three of them had had a turn changing back and forth behind a stack of boxes, Ladybug led them to the roof, where they surveyed the situation in the streets below.

Chaos.  Moaning.  Traffic stopped all across the city.  A horde thousands strong staggered toward a small coffee shop across the way from an unremarkable, family owned bakery.  

“Coffee,” some of them moaned.  “Fifty percent off all day,” moaned others.

Ladybug shook her head.  “And that,  _ that _ , is why I drink tea.”


End file.
